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Jonah Sachs: 'The story of inadequacy marketing is over'

This article was taken from the April 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.

One of the astounding things about social media is how nice it tends to make everyone. "Follow", "like" and "love" are now dominant words. Given a forum to say anything from a safe distance, we might expect people to go on the attack. What could be more human, after all? But that behaviour is the rare exception rather than the rule within the cultures of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and the like. Social capital is built by giving thumbs-ups to others in your social networks rather than tearing them down.

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For most of us, this shift away from an acceptance of put-downs and gossip to an expectation of positive reinforcement has come naturally, if quite suddenly. For marketers, however, it's proving to be a far greater leap. To get there, they've got some serious bad habits to break.

Since the emergence of modern marketing, professional communicators have relied on the "inadequacy approach". Tell your audience that the world is dangerous, that they lack what they need, that they don't quite fit in. Then offer the magic cure -- your product. Our marketing forefathers developed this powerful storytelling language that casts a brand as the hero come to rescue the consumer -- the damsel in distress. A 2005 study by consumer-research group Yankelovich revealed that, in the US, people received more than 3,500 commercial messages a day. The majority of them rely on inadequacy stories. The problem is, these messages are entirely out of step with the supportive, empowering culture of social media, and that means death for any marketer hoping to get heard.

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Messages based on empowerment, which make the audience the hero and remind them of how full of potential they are, are proving to be social-media readyJonah Sachs

Just a decade ago, a TV ad for, say, deodorant could inspire body-odour anxiety in millions of viewers waiting for their sitcom to return. Today, those audiences are filtering broadcast ads out. And while they tune out broadcast, they're tuning in to recommendations they hear from friends. Can marketers get in on this? Of course -- if they catch up with the times. They need to recognise that nobody wants to push an anxiety-provoking message to their network. That would destroy the sender's social capital. So such messages can't find viral pick-up.

But messages based on empowerment, which make the audience the hero and remind them of how full of potential they are, are proving to be social-media ready.

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Empowerment marketing isn't exactly new. Apple's "Think Different", Nike's "Just Do It", Obama's "Yes We Can" -- all reinforced the potential of their audiences rather than making them feel in need of rescue. They provide proof of the power of such advertising even in the broadcast era. But they were a tiny minority of the millions of campaigns then being produced.

Why does this matter to anyone not in marketing? It matters because advertising has shaped our culture and identities more than any other cultural force in the last century. Hearing thousands of stories a day about how incomplete we are has convinced many of us to see ourselves as consumers first, citizens second. It's weakened our public institutions and driven us to unsustainable consumption. As we now choose which messages to consume and pass to our networks, we are regaining control. We are redefining how one builds social currency and status. And we are likely to find that a very different culture emerges as a result.

Jonah Sachs is cofounder and creative director of Free Range Studios in New York, and author of Winning The Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell and Live the Best Stories Will Rule the Future(Harvard Business Review Press)

This article was first published in the April 2013 issue of WIRED magazine